Nauru can hold asylum seekers, High Court rules

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THE High Court has upheld the main thrust of the Pacific
Solution, ruling that Nauru may detain asylum seekers on
Australia's behalf.

In a 4-1 decision, the court said that Nauru could issue
special-purpose visas to the 1232 asylum seekers taken to the
island following the Tampa affair in 2001. The visas restricted the
asylum seekers to two detention centres on the island.

The decision affects the 29 asylum seekers still detained on
Nauru after four years.

The action was taken on behalf of Mohammad Arif Ruhani, an
Afghan national of apparently Hazara ethnicity, who was among the
319 asylum seekers rescued by the Norwegian ship MV Tampa in August
2001.

Mr Ruhani was granted an Australian visa this year and has left
the island.

Lawyers for Mr Ruhani argued that the Nauruan authorities
exceeded their power by attaching conditions to the visas that
amounted to punishment that could only be imposed by a court.

They also argued the visa was not valid as Mr Ruhani had neither
applied for nor consented to it. But the High Court held that it
was up to Nauru, as a sovereign state, to attach whatever
conditions it wished to visas, and that there were a variety of
visa classifications that could cover emergency entrants and those
without passports.

Justice Michael Kirby, who dissented, argued that the
deprivation of Mr Ruhani's liberty did not accord with Nauruan
law.

He also criticised the Government's conduct as "seriously
unreasonable" for bankrolling Nauru's earlier challenge to the High
Court hearing the case.

A spokesman for the Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone
welcomed the decision.

Melbourne lawyer Eric Vadarlis said the High Court had put its
seal of approval on offshore detention centres.

"We were disappointed that the court did not accept and did not
refer to the fact that these people were not there of their own
volition," said Mr Vadarlis, one of the lawyers who last year lost
a court challenge over the Nauru detention centre.

"These people were there because they were taken there by the
Australian Government, they didn't want to be there," he said.